known quality

So it turns out you want____________to know nothing______and it frightens me.
It means you must________know enough already.

For example, you must_______know I’m calibrated________________________to sit stiff
with my hands in my lap like flowers______meant for someone who’s just done____a tremendous job.

Someone’s just done a dance_________with all of her strong arms
and legs in the air.________________Someone’s just done_____a big trombone solo.

Someone puts her nose____________to the flowers
and in her excitement______forgets to breathe in.

What did he bring you?____________someone asks.____They smell lovely, she says___________instead of roses.

There are flowers_______it’s possible not
to be wrong about. Their smell.___The way they sit___________doing nothing
in plastic in your hands.

__________________________________________Laura Eve Engel’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, LIT, Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review and elsewhere. [Spoiler Alert], a chapbook co-written with Adam Peterson, will be available from The Collagist/Dzanc Books in the fall. She is the 2011 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can follow her on Twitter @hoostown.